Dispatches from the Control Room – November 23

I’m calculating now… over the last 24 hours, I’ve slept just 20 minutes. Things are blurring together and my body is running on a combination of honey roasted peanuts stashed in my desk, Dick Johnson’s gingerbread Krispy Kremes and Kim Vatis’ brownies. Also, I have a huge Thanksgiving dinner in my gut, making me very drowsy. I’d hoped the king-size Snickers and Monster energy drink I knocked back on my drive in would push me through. Not so much.

Oh, did I mention I spent the holiday in Kalamazoo, Michigan? And I had to drive through the last 50 miles of I-94 in Michigan as they were blasted with snow (unplowed snow), dropping my commute speed to a good 35 m.p.h. crawl. When you feel like you’re going to simultaneously throw up and pass out, there’s nothing better to do than assemble a newscast to be seen by a few thousand people.

Aw, who am I kidding? Nobody watches the 4:30 a.m. show.

… certainly not the shoppers standing outside mass retailers, waiting to punch each other in the face for a $10 DVD player that will break inside 30 days.

I used to work for a certain large electronic retail chain. I recall one specific day after Thanksgiving where I pulled stereos off the upper shelves and handed them down directly to a teeming mass of bargain-hunters. I still have the scars on my forearms. (Some of them kept screaming for “Barabbas.” No idea what was goin’ on with that.)

Anyway, spend the extra $10 and get something that won’t end up propping up your loved one’s uneven coffee table in six months. Besides, I hear half this year’s door-busters are assembled using leftover Aqua Dots.

* As exhausted as all of us are from whipping through a holiday and returning to our grueling, relentless, thankless overnight jobs, things are about to get much, much worse. Thanks to a new technical system, we producers will soon be forced to stick around until 1 p.m. for rehearsals. Nothing like two straight weeks of 13-hour days during the holidays to drive someone to the brink of madness. (For those of us already on the brink, Ozzie Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” is playing on a constant loop in our heads.)